London Pickpocket. "Folks call this Telegraph a Great Hinvention! I say it's mean! It don't give a Cove a fair chance! They'll know all about him in Hamerica afore he gets there!"

The
laying of the transatlantic telegraph cable was one of the most eagerly
anticipated events of the nineteenth century. Upon its completion,
it was celebrated as "the eighth wonder of the world."
However, as most things have their downside, the pickpockets in this
cartoon discuss a possible negative effect upon their illicit
profession.

The
telegraph spread rapidly in the United States after completion of the
first line in 1844, dramatically altering communication for business,
railroads, journalism, and personal correspondence. In 1851, the
first underwater cable was laid between Dover, England, and Calais,
France. In 1855, during the Crimean War being fought between
Russia and Great Britain and her allies, the British government
financed, owned, and operated a submarine cable across the Black Sea
from Bulgaria to Ukraine. As intended, it functioned only until
the end of the war the next year.

In
1854, the discovery of a shallow underwater plateau in the Atlantic
Ocean between Newfoundland and Ireland inspired Cyrus Field to attempt
the connection of North America and Europe by a submarine telegraph
cable. Field, whose
millions from paper manufacturing made him one of the richest men in New
York City, convinced several of his wealthy friends to join him on the
project: Peter Cooper (his neighbor at Gramercy Park), David
Dudley Field (his brother), Abram Hewitt, Moses Taylor, Marshall
Roberts, and Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph. They secured
a charter for the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company,
raised $1.5 million, and hired workers to clear a path through the
Canadian wilderness to link by telegraph Nova Scotia (where the U.S.
telegraph lines ended) with St. John's, Newfoundland.

In
February 1857, Congress approved an annual subsidy of $70,000 to Field's
company for laying and operating a telegraph line between Newfoundland
and New York, and authorized the U.S. president to negotiate a treaty
with Britain for laying the transatlantic cable. Opponents argued
that it was an unconstitutional expenditure of federal funds,
technically infeasible, and a ploy by foreigners and foreign-born
Americans. Supporters stressed, sometimes in utopian terms, its
potential for fostering international peace by bringing the U.S. and the
European nations closer together.

With
the completion of the New York-Newfoundland line, British investors
joined Field in creating the Atlantic Telegraph Company, and work began
on surveying and laying the 1,660 nautical miles from Newfoundland to
Valentia, Ireland. The cable consisted of a copper conductor
insulated by gutta percha (Malaysian latex) and protected by iron wire.
The cable was too large to be transported on a single ship, so it was
spliced together in the ocean. The USS Niagara and the HMS
Agamemnon
carried out the actual laying of the cable during the summer months of
1857 and 1858.

A
violent storm at sea nearly wrecked the British frigate, but the task of
laying the cable was completed in the summer of 1858. On August
17, 1858, the first transatlantic telegraph message was transmitted from
Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan. The dispatch took 16
hours to reach Washington, and the shorter return message to London went
through in only ten hours. Previously, such communications would have
taken 12 days by steamship and land telegraph.

The
press and public had closely followed the attempt to lay a transatlantic
cable, and reacted with enthusiasm when word of its success was
reported. In 1857 and 1858, Harper's Weekly ran numerous
illustrated news stories, news briefs, editorials, maps, charts,
sketches, and portraits, which provided information about the project's
promoters and personnel, ships, routes, cable-laying operations, and
telegraphic technology, or about the political issues involving
Congress, the British government, or Anglo-American relations. The
newspaper published several cartoons on the topic, such as the one
featured today; verse, including "A Rhyme for the Atlantic
Telegraph," by Martin Farquhar Tupper; and advertisements for
souvenirs made from "genuine" pieces of cable aboard the ships
(to be worn as charms or watch keys) and a perfume called Atlantic
Cable Bouquet, dedicated to Cyrus Field and "distilled from
ocean spray and fragrant flowers."

On
September 1, 1858, New York City hosted a huge celebration to honor
Cyrus Field and the transatlantic cable, with a daylight parade down
Broadway, the largest public gathering in Union Square to that time,
grandiose speech-making and versifying, a torchlight procession that
night, and a
spectacular fireworks display (which caught the cupola of City Hall on
fire). Harper's Weekly and other publications printed special
supplements on the cable and the festivities. Unfortunately, the
jubilation was premature.

Over
the few weeks since its completion, 271 messages had been transmitted,
including reports of the end of the Anglo-Chinese War and the Sepoy
Mutiny in India. When the dispatches became increasingly difficult
to decipher, the cable's chief engineer turned up the voltage, causing a
total failure of transmission on September 18, 1858. The money
invested by the Atlantic Telegraph Company was lost, and public
skepticism reemerged concerning the ultimate feasibility of a
transatlantic cable.

Field
and others closest to the project, however, realized a transatlantic
telegraph could work and learned from their mistakes. In 1860, the
British government finished laying a Red Sea cable. The American
Civil War delayed plans for the transatlantic telegraph, but patience
and persistence paid off when the underwater cable was successfully
completed in July 1866. That time, it lasted.